A Diary of a Notorious Bloody Scallywag
by epiphanies
Summary: I wrote of nothing but Navy men from then on in class, and when I wrote one when I was thirteen about a rogue Navy Commodore, my teacher visited me at my desk and said, “You shouldn’t write about bad Navy men, Jack. It’s not patriotic.”


A Diary of a Notorious Bloody Scallywag

  
  


17 of October

  
  


I was very young when I realized what I wanted. When I realized that I didn't belong in the countryside. When I realized that all I wanted was to be...

When I was four, I wanted to be a champion horse-rider. I loved horses then. I owned one named Ruffle, she was my best friend. She was biscuit coloured. She had a mate named George but I always poked him whenever he came to her for favours because I didn't like anybody else talking to Ruffle. For she was mine. 

When I was five, my mother forced me to go to school. I cried and she wiped my tears on the maid's apron. She slapped my bum lightly as I waddled into the schoolhouse and sat down in the very back row. The schoolteacher didn't like me much. I didn't say anything. Well, she didn't like me until she told us to write short stories when we were in the fifth form, five years later. Then she read mine and liked it plenty, though she said there was "too much violence, Jack. Why don't you write a romance?" I tried to and it ended up a flowery pile of rubbish that wouldn't have done justice to any romance except maybe the ones that I have had since. 

When I was eleven, my father gave me my first sword. It was short and dull, and I loved it so. I still have it fixed in my bootstrap. He told me that gentlemen never raised their swords, however, unless they were in the Navy. He spoke ill of the Navy, telling me stories of the blood that they shed. I was fascinated.

I suppose that was the beginning of my end. I wrote of nothing but Navy men from then on in class, and when I wrote one when I was thirteen about a rogue Navy Commodore, my teacher visited me at my desk and said, "You shouldn't write about bad Navy men, Jack. It's not patriotic." I said that I wasn't patriotic and she gasped at me, then said that if I were to write any more that she would tell my father. I pleaded with the bloody wench not to tell him, I said I'd do anything. She said, "Rewrite this to make it a pirate story." I asked her what a pirate was. She told me with frightened eyes and I listened with a growing mind, an open mind, a lovely young, innocent mind. And with every detail about them, with every adjective, with every "swashbuckler" and "scallywag" and "filibuster" I grew more fascinated. More obsessed.

I polished my sword every day. Girls tried to kiss me under the mistletoe that year. I let them, and it was nice sometimes. I started saying "Aye" instead of "Yes" because I'd gotten hold of a book all about pirates from the little library over the hill. I started saying "Mate" when I talked to people, and they looked at me with harsh eyes. My father gave me the strap, oh, must have been forty times between the age of thirteen and fourteen. It was the best year, except for the next. 

The next year, oh the next year. I took Ruffle and I took a bag, with my sword and I rode away, over the hills, to London. From there, I bought a tri-cornered hat (not the one I have now, it was much cheaper) and scuffed my boots in an alleyway to make them look used. I then sold Ruffle, with many unshed-but-brimming tears to a merchant sailor in exchange for my ride down to Port Royal, Jamaica. 

The ride was terrible, I had thought. I was sick for the first two days, spent them below deck, only smelling the ocean and never seeing her. 

On the third day, though, I came up for some air and saw something that put a light behind my eyes, for the first time in my life.

We were a ship, a particle of the world in a vast sea of -nothing-. And the colour of the sea that first day! And the breeze, oh, I loved it running through my hair so much that I decided that it should never be cut. And it was never cut again. 

I joined a crew of rapscallions as soon as we reached Port Royal, and they sailed to Tortuga, teaching me how to work the riggings. It was terrifying, that trip. But I loved the thrill, and so didn't think twice that I could have died. After all, to my parents, I -was- all but dead. 

Tortuga made me a man as much as it made me a pirate. I had kissed girls under the mistletoe - in Tortuga I met women. I met a young girl named Gisele. I met a man named George and he introduced me to a young fellow named William Turner, who had just joined the cast of a ship called the Black Pearl. The name had fascinated me, and I asked William to show it to me from the docks..

From that first moment. Oh, the Pearl. She was lovely. Her black sails and her black flag. The wind tearing through her, her ricketing in the ocean. The contrast of her darkness to the bright sun of the Caribbean. I basked, oh, I basked.

I gasped to William, "How can I get on that?"

He thought I was joking. I shook my head no, and he said, "I could bring you to the Captain if you like."

He brought me to Geeley. He was a fine Captain, a good man and a good pirate until the day he died. When he lay there with his graying hair and said to the entire crew, "This man is to be your Captain, understand?" And he was pointing at me. When he first met me, he looked at my scrawny arms and legs. He watched my eyes, though, darting around, astounded and profoundly in love with the ship I had just set foot on. He recognized a passion when he saw one, he always said that. And he said "Savvy?" 

  
  


After he died and I was mutineered, and when William died, and after the adventures with Will and Elizabeth.... One would think that I would be ready to give up my ship to another young, strapping, hardworking man (and it would have to be a man deserving to be a Captain, because I don't trust the female impulsions of Ana. Sorry love.) One would think.

Do you take me for a fool? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. This ship will be mine. Forever. 

And if you're readin' this, I'll kill you.


End file.
